Alec Mazo

Alec Mazo (born April 5, 1978) is a Belarusian-American producer and former professional dancer.

Early Life
Mazo was born in Gomel, Belarusian SSR into a Jewish family and has one brother, Genya, who's also a ballroom dancer. He has been dancing since he was 5 years old. At age 12, he immigrated from the Soviet Union to San Antonio, Texas, and later to San Francisco, where his former engineer mother, Natasha, began a dance school. Mazo began studying dancing there at 16 in order to improve his socialisation skills with girls, and to ease his back problems.

He studied computer science, and then cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley, in the hopes of one day becoming a dance teacher.

Career
Mazo appeared in the 1998 movie Dance With Me. He turned a professional dancer shortly before the producers of Dancing with the Stars began their search for dancers to star on the show.

He won the first season of Dancing with the Stars with his partner, Kelly Monaco.

Mazo returned to the ballroom on March 19, 2007 for Season 4, this time partnered with former supermodel Paulina Porizkova, but were the first couple eliminated. Despite being eliminated first, Paulina along with Shandi Finnessey (who was eliminated the very next week) both hold a higher average than a few celebrities who lasted longer than them.

He appeared on the fifth season and was partnered with supermodel Josie Maran, who were eliminated on September 26, 2007, after the first week of the competition, making it the second time in a row he was eliminated first.

Mazo competed for the title with partner, Grammy Award-winning singer Toni Braxton in Season 7. After six dances, Braxton and Mazo became the fifth couple to be eliminated from the season.

In Season 9, Mazo was paired with Olympic swimmer, Natalie Coughlin. They were the fifth couple to be eliminated despite relatively good scores and received a standing ovation from the crowd and judges.

After Dancing with the Stars, he went to Stanford University to get his MBA. He currently runs a production company specialising in live stage entertainment and television reality formats.

Mazo also worked as the CEO of the Genesis Dance Sport studio in San Francisco. Expanding the studio into Los Angeles has been one of his goals.

Personal Life
Mazo is married to his long-time dancing partner Edyta Śliwińska, a native of Poland. The couple have a son born in 2014 and a daughter born in 2017.